With this new world of recruiting, we see more players opting to reclassify and enter college early. This trend is still relatively new, thanks to the NIL era. However, we can slowly see the trend picking up across all positions, which impacts our fantasy football players, too. While entering college early can potentially help secure the financial futures of these kids forever, it also means these players are passing up time in high school sports.
This may work out for the elite five stars or older players reclassifying up to their correct age group. For the younger players making this plunge, it comes with the extra challenge of playing guys with additional experience at a new talent level. High school reps would likely be guaranteed and plentiful for these top names at their respective programs. At the same time, the college level will possibly limit the number of times they get to refine their craft to win against better competition consistently.
To start this off, I believe we need to look at past examples. Once that is done, we can consider how that applies to our current 2025 and future 2026 classes. The past will help lay out the potential future outlook for these guys for us on C2C squads as a baseline for each position. While this outlook is a small sample size, I think it highlights some of the upside and risk we can expect for more early entrants.
I will break down the lists as follows:
Player name/ school/ composite score/ stars
Quarterbacks
JT Daniels/ Stanford/ 0.9909/ 5 stars
Quinn Ewers/ Ohio State/ 1.000/ 5 stars
Gavin Wimsatt/ Kentucky/ 0.9201/ 4 stars
Austin Simmons/ Ole Miss/ 0.9059/ 4 stars
Austin Mack/ Washington/ 0.9204 / 4 stars
Colin Hurley/ LSU/ 0.9000/ 4 stars
Cutter Boley/ Kentucky/ 0.9014/ 4 stars
Myles Jackson/Stanford / 0.8892/ 3 stars
This is a mixed bag of names, with some high-rated guys in Ewers and Daniels, all the way down to a borderline 4-star name. Both the five stars were solid ratings in my model coming out of high school, and I have had varied results.
Daniels never could stay healthy, and Ewers had similar issues but with more gradual success. Simmons could join the higher end of the list with his chance to start at Ole Miss now. He has had some solid spring buzz, which is encouraging for the kid who transferred up two classes to sit and learn for two years behind Jaxson Dart.
To this point, the others have been more like C2C roster cloggers, with Wimsatt, Mack, Hurley, Jackson, and Boley, too. If a player is not a highly rated guy, it seems to run a lot of risk of getting stuck in a logjam or recruited over. With programs focusing most QB reps on the top dudes, these young guys need to secure the backup spot for the practice time needed to showcase themselves and prove that the team should turn to them when it is time. Both Kentucky guys have been passed over, Mack is still in a battle even to get reps, Hurley almost lost his job to a better recruit, and Jackson is buried.
Running Backs
Braelon Allen/ Wisconsin/ 0.9159/ 4 stars
Antwan Raymond/ Rutgers/ 0.8739/ 3 stars
Emeka Megwa/ Washington/ 0.9000/ 4 stars
Braelon Allen is the clear path to success for the limited trio of reclassified running backs. He entered a room that lacked a standout and made the most of his opportunities as the most athletic guy in the room.
Raymond’s story is not fully written, but he now finds himself in a positional battle with transfer CJ Campbell and Jashon Benjamin entering Year 2. If he cannot outshine Campbell, he may lose that late-season gain he made in the bowl game.
I have never heard of Megwa, who has been in college since 2021. He never played at Washington for two years, got one carry at Oklahoma in 2023, did nothing this past season, and has now transferred to UNLV, where he will unlikely do anything in 2025.
This is a spot where I think guys need those extra reps in high school to develop the nuances and techniques of the position that allow guys to come in and dominate from the beginning. Allen ended up being in my top tier of HS RB scores with a 93% score, while Raymond falls into the low 70s, which is a very risky gray area.
Wide Receivers
Ryan Williams/ Alabama/ 0.9956/ 5 stars
Hardley Gilmore/ Kentucky/ 0.9056/ 4 stars
Kyler Kasper/ Oregon/ 0.9401/ 4 stars
Malcolm Johnson Jr/ Auburn/ 0.9189/ 4 stars
Ryan Williams is the type of player that I like to see reclassified, as he was rewriting the Alabama high school record books as a local legend well before he declared. His sophomore stats were added to his junior year. He sat as a top name, even against peers in my model that got to use their junior and senior years, when they are the oldest and most dominant names on the high school level. It is not hard to see why the return in Year 1 was phenomenal for Alabama.
The other three on this list were not great out of high school, with model scores reflecting that. Those three combined so far for 29 touches in their first three years collectively before Johnson Jr finally had a little production at Bowling Green this last season with 49 catches for 569 yards and 3 TDs. Any odds of these three being NFL-relevant names are gone, and only one may be worth a swing for some CFF play if you believe in Johnson Jr. Only Williams ended up falling into my top two tiers for HS receivers based on that production. In contrast, all others were 70% (Johnson) or much lower.
Tight Ends
Davon Mitchell/ Oklahoma/ 0.9342/ 4 stars
The only thing Mitchell has been able to show so far is a significant weight gain before hitting the portal to leave Oklahoma. With tight end being such a developmental position, it may take a moment to see how he turns out fully. Losing a year to develop technique in high school and his first year at Oklahoma behind a logjam of players did him no services, though. Even with all the headline guys out with injury, Mitchell failed to be any of the TWENTY players at Oklahoma to log a reception on the season. Mitchell probably is going to be a bad bet.
Historical Hindsight:
Even while reclassifying, Daniels, Ewers, and Williams were all five stars in the services. Daniels had a crazy career filled with injury, so who knows what may have become, but the other two have returned some value.
Allen was a solid mid-4-star and rated well in my model before proving useful for college production. Simmons is the one exception to the rule for moving multiple years up with a perfect landing scenario to be handed a shot to lead now.
The rest of the names all failed my model outlooks for high school recruits because the production was low based on historical success (Simmons did too, but that is expected for a guy who did not play junior or senior years compared to older peers). While most positions offer some limited names right now to refer to (looking at you, tight ends), it does help us see how the risk of less development reps in high school may be holding them back in college when opportunities become tougher to claim on the practice field. Alright, time to see why this matters for 2025 and the future 2026 classes.
2025 Prospects
Julian Lewis/ Colorado/ 0.9762/ 4 stars
Brady Hart/ Texas A&M/ 0.9254/ 4 stars
Donovan Murph/ South Carolina/ 0.9316/ 4 stars
Jordon Gidron/ South Carolina/ 0.9184/ 4 stars
Malachi Toney/ Miami/ 0.8993/ 4 stars
Omar Mabson/ Auburn/ 0.8803/ 3 stars
The 2025 class presents us with six names this year for reclassified players coming to college. Lewis is by far the biggest name with a composite score that saw him fall out of 5-star status and just outside the top 100 overall. His model score of 78 also suggested a lower ceiling than Ewers, and being labeled with a recruit typing of “Statue” is highly worrisome.
Statue quarterbacks do not offer great college rushing production (sometimes being zeros or negatives in that department), which means they will have to overcome it with elite passing volume and efficiency. That is a tough bet. Hart is even lower rated in my model, and the exact type of quarterback that gets passed over later by a team that is not afraid to throw money around.
Murph is the only player on this list who scored well in the model. He ended up with an 86% and fell into a tier of WRs out of high school. Between that and having a decently high recruit score, he is a name to consider for later in supplemental drafts.
On the other hand, his running mate, Gidron, did not score well in my model, so I would hold off on him with how past receivers have ended up with poor model scores. Toney scores a little lower, but at least has my attention with some positive spring buzz on a team with a more open receiving unit.
The last name here is Mabson. He was a 73 on my model if we account for both seasons listed on Maxpreps, but does jump to an 84 if we focus on his junior season. My primary concern is that he joins with less experience and as a summer enrollee. UConn transfer Durrell Robinson had surgery for a cleanup operation, so he is also missing spring. Still, he is losing reps to fellow freshman Alvin Henderson and the returning vets on the roster. A lot has to go right to overcome the odds for someone I see going Top 5 in freshman drafts. He would be a fun 3-star bet, but this one will cost some conviction.
2026 Prospects
Ezavier Crowell / 0.9837/ 5 stars
Ethan “Boobie” Feaster/ 0.9760/ 4 stars
Mark Bowman/ 0.9916/ 5 stars
Mason Holtzclaw/ unranked currently
With a quick look ahead to the next cycle, we have three prominent names already reclassified early. Ezavier Crowell is the most exciting of these names based on the way he pops already using sophomore stats in the model and the offer list. He has five visits lined up this summer, one to Auburn. This does not bode well for Mabson when Crowell already looks better and showed just that on the field while a class younger too. He’s a super explosive kid, so I am excited to see what junior year has.
The other two players here scare me as their production profiles do not match past historical hits. Feaster is a highly rated receiver in the composite with a score close to a 5-star and sits as WR6 in the class. However, in 14 games last season, he did not eclipse 830 yards or average over a receiving touchdown per game. I get he was the second option behind Daylon Singleton, who is two years older. Still, I do not see Singleton as a special player in my projection either, so it would be nice to see him get overtaken by the sophomore.
Bowman has the physical tools to be a special tight end at the next level and plays good competition at Mater Dei. He did well as a sophomore tight end, leading the team in touchdowns and third in yards plus receptions. I do want to see him take a jump as a junior to match what some of the greats like Bowers and Andrews did in high school.
Feaster and Bowman remain highly ranked in the services, so that bodes well in comparison to the past guys reclassified. Still, both will need to be model re-evaluations once junior year stats are done to see if just those seasons better align with good historical bets at the positions since both are giving up valuable high school reps from senior years.
